Sins of the Father (12 page)

S
miling, Michael rubbed his jaw. “So big brother has an awesome right hook,” he said
to Isaac. “Not bad.” His smile turned ruthless. “Maybe I should be the one to call
security. I believe you just assaulted me.” For effect, he let his eyes roam the room.
“All of this could be mine someday, thanks to you.” He clapped his hand against his
forehead. “What am I saying? This
will
be mine someday.”

“Over my dead body,” Saralyn piped in.

Isaac shot his mother a glare. “This is between him and me,” he told her. “Stay out
of it, Mother.”

Michael glanced in her direction. “Yes, Stepmom,” he said to the woman whose outfit
had to cost more than his mother’s entire wardrobe. “Stay out of it.”

Rebecca stepped between the two men. “You both need to take a step back.” When neither
man moved, she added, “Literally.”

Michael grinned at her. “I like it when you go all home girl on me, Rebecca,” he said
to irk her. “It gets me hot.” He turned to Isaac to get in another jab. “She’s perfect
isn’t she—a perfect lady during the day and a perfect freak at night?”

Isaac raised his fists again. “You—”

“Isaac, no!” both women screamed as Isaac quickly pushed Rebecca out of the way and
lunged at Michael. Caught off balance, Michael fell to floor with Isaac on top of
him, the women yelling for them to stop. Rebecca grabbed Isaac by the collar in an
attempt to pull him off Michael. Saralyn stood with her arms folded, apparently happy
to see her son get the best of her stepson.

The conference door shot open.

“Michael!”

“Stop it now!”

“What’s going on here?”

Michael recognized the voices of his mother and sister. He turned and saw them standing
in the doorway, mouths open, aghast at what they were seeing. The MEEG attorney, Alan
Weems, stood with them.

“This is not what Abraham wanted,” Alan said, taking control of the situation by first
pushing Rebecca away from Isaac and then pulling Isaac off Michael. Then he extended
his hand and helped Michael up from the floor. He looked at the two brothers. “You’re
behaving like children,” he told them. “This room is not soundproof. Everybody along
this hallway could hear you. I can only imagine what they’re thinking.”

Michael straightened his clothes. “I thought you rich people were more in control
of your emotions and actions than poor working stiffs like me.” He shrugged, rubbing
his jaw again. “I guess I was wrong.”

“That’s enough, Michael,” his mother said, her voice full of dis
appointment. He hated when she used that tone. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Michael turned to her. “Why not, Mama?” he said, angry with what he interpreted as
her putting Abraham’s wishes above her children’s needs…again. “I’m Abraham’s son.
I have as much right to be here as the rest of you.”

“You have no rights,” Saralyn said. “If it were left to me, none of you would be here.
I have no idea what Abraham was thinking. This will never work.”

“Everybody needs to take a deep breath,” Alan said. “This has to work,” he said to
Saralyn. “It’s what Abraham wanted.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “This company has other priorities beyond what
Abraham wants,” she declared.

Alan nodded. “You’re right.” He glanced at each person in the room. “Why don’t we
all take a seat?”

“He shouldn’t be here,” Saralyn said, pointing at Michael.

Alan ignored her. “Everybody please take a seat. We can and will conduct this meeting
professionally and in an orderly fashion.”

Seeing Isaac take the seat at the head of the table, Michael proceeded to the chair
at the opposite end, facing him. Two could play this game. Rebecca and Saralyn sat
on either side of Isaac. His mother and Deborah sat on either side of him. That sides
had been chosen was clear from the seating arrangements. There were three empty chairs
between Saralyn and Deborah, and three between Rebecca and his mother.

Alan, the mediator, chose the middle ground. He took the center chair on the side
with Saralyn and Deborah. “Look,” he said, as he glanced around the table, “this is
not an ideal situation for any of us, but it’s our reality until Abraham returns to
the helm. You all may not like each other, but if you care anything about this company,
you will find a way to work together.”

“I’m not sure I agree with that,” Saralyn said. “We know this
company inside and out. We don’t need them. And he”—she pointed to Michael—“doesn’t
even belong here.”

Michael leaned back in his chair and propped one leg over the other. “Seems somebody
is forgetting etiquette class.”

“Michael—” his mother chided.

He shrugged as if he didn’t know what he’d done to incur her wrath.

“What are you going to do, Saralyn?” Alan asked, so clearly exasperated he didn’t
even wait for an answer. “There’s nothing you can do if you care about this company.
Any infighting at this point with Abraham out of commission will be read as instability
by our business partners and our competitors. Do you want that?”

“But—”

Isaac covered his mother’s hand with his own. “He’s right, Mom. It doesn’t matter
how we feel about each other. We have to present a united front. The vultures will
swoop in at any sign of weakness. We all lose if that happens.”

Saralyn sat back in her chair, quieted for now. Rebecca said nothing. Michael surmised
that, like him, she didn’t have a vote in what went on.

“Now that we’ve settled that issue,” Alan said, “let’s move on to the business at
hand.”

Michael watched the faces of the folks present at the table more than he listened
to the attorney. Saralyn Martin was everything he hated in a woman. She thought she
was better than him and his family. She especially thought herself better than his
mother. She and Abraham would have to pay for that attitude.

Isaac, on the other hand, had impressed him. He rubbed his chin again. His older brother
could land a punch. Not bad for a man who’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
Isaac was made of sterner stuff than he’d thought. Michael glanced at Rebecca, who
paid him no attention. No, she kept her attention
on Isaac. She’d fought for her man, so maybe she really did love him. And Isaac’s
reaction to his taunts suggested that he loved Rebecca as well, though there was something
in the way he refused to look at her that made Michael think there might be a problem
in paradise.

He spent the rest of the meeting contemplating ways to exploit the problems in Isaac
and Rebecca’s marriage to his advantage.

J
osette stepped off the hospital elevator, unsure she was doing the right thing but
positive something had to be done. If she weren’t pregnant, she could let things slide,
but she was going to be a mother, and mothers couldn’t afford inaction. Not if they
loved their children. She rubbed her hand across her tummy. And she desperately loved
her child. If she didn’t, she would have walked away from her marriage to Michael
as soon as she’d learned of his relationship with Abraham and Isaac. But the child
growing inside her kept her from making rash decisions. Yes, her emotions were all
over the place, but somehow she was grounded enough to know that fighting for her
marriage was the right thing to do.

There had been something about Michael that attracted her. She wasn’t so superficial
as to fall for him because he’d romanced her. No, there was a vulnerability in him
that she saw from the first. Of course, he’d tried to hide it. But she felt closest
to him then.
Those times when his vulnerability showed had been infrequent since his kinship with
Abraham became public knowledge.

She walked to the reception desk. “I’m here to see patient Abraham Martin. I’m his
daughter-in-law.” That was the truth.

“He’s in intensive care,” the nurse at the desk said. “That’s on the fourth floor.
Take the elevator around the corner.”

Josette rubbed her stomach as she made her way to the elevator and up to Abraham’s
floor. The nurse there directed her to his room. Josette stood at his door looking
at him. It seemed that he was asleep, and she guessed he was. A coma was a deep sleep,
wasn’t it?

She walked over to the bed and pressed a kiss on Abraham’s forehead. “Hi, Grandpa,”
she said. She reached behind her, pulled a chair up close to the bed and eased down
into it. As she sat before the sleeping Abraham, she began to weep quietly. This man
was her father-in-law, her unborn child’s grandfather, and her husband hadn’t bothered
to tell her.

When her tears finally subsided, she felt a little better. “Abraham,” she said, “I
need you to wake up. Your first grandchild needs you to wake up. You started something
when you acknowledged Michael and Deborah as your children, and you need to wake up
so you can finish it. Things are not going well without you. Though he’d never admit
it, Michael is a wreck. I’m afraid he’s going to repeat your mistakes.”

She looked up at Abraham, hoping her declaration would awaken him. She found him still
sleeping. “I’m a wreck, too, and it’s all your fault. Why did you treat your children
so badly?” She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “You have to get better, Abraham,
so you can fix this mess. Michael is bound and determined to make you pay for your
indifference to him and Deborah. He’s crashing your board meeting this morning. He
wanted me to join him but I refused. I can’t take the drama. The baby can’t take it.”

She brushed away the tears that streamed down her face. “I
don’t want to leave Michael,” she said, “but it’s like he’s pushing me away intentionally.
One day he’s going to wake up, and the baby and I will be gone. Maybe that’s what
he wants. Maybe he feels he doesn’t deserve to have a family. Maybe he doesn’t know
how to be a husband and father, since you were never there. That’s why you have to
get better, Abraham. You weren’t there to teach Michael how to be a man when he was
a boy, so now you have to help him learn it as an adult.

“He’s going to fight you all the way, but you owe me and you owe him. I’ll never do
to my child what you did to Michael. I don’t see how you could do it—walk away from
your son. It’s hard for me to reconcile that man in the magazines all buddy-buddy
with Isaac with the man who refused to acknowledge a son and daughter for thirty years.”
She gave a bitter laugh. “What kind of man does that make you?”

Josette sat back in her chair. She realized she was directing all the anger she felt
toward Michael onto Abraham. He did share some of the blame for the problems in her
life, but Michael was a grown man. He had to deal with being a husband and father
regardless of how his relationship with Abraham progressed. Maybe she should be having
this conversation with him.

D
eborah tried to present a calm demeanor, when she actually felt anything but calm.
Saralyn Martin was a piece of work, sitting through the entire meeting staring at
her, Michael, and her mother as though they were gum stuck to the bottom of her new
Gucci pumps. If nothing else, the woman’s attitude made her glad Abraham had not reached
out to them when they were children. The hatred coming from this woman would devastate
a child.

Deborah glanced at her mother and was proud. Leah Thomas held her head high and wore
a serene expression on her face. Saralyn Martin might have more money and live a more
glamorous lifestyle, but her mother had more class, hands down. Saralyn Martin lacked
the simple “home training” that her mother had instilled in her and her brother.

Well, she had to be honest. Michael seemed to have forgotten a bit of his “home training,”
otherwise she, her mother, and
Alan would not have found him tussling on the floor when they entered the boardroom.
Talk about embarrassing! She could kill Michael for acting a fool in front of these
people. He was only showing them what they expected to see.

“We all have our parts to do,” Alan was saying. “And we have to support each other.”

“I think what you mean, Alan, is that we all have to rally around Isaac now that he’s
stepped in for
his
father,” Saralyn said, stressing the
his
to exclude Abraham’s other children. Deborah couldn’t help but roll her eyes. The
woman was pathetic.

“True,” Alan said. “Isaac is at the helm of MEEG until Abraham gets back. And his
job is to keep the ship on its current course, not change it. This is a temporary
change of leadership, not a final one.”

“I understand, Alan,” Isaac said. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

Deborah had been studying her half brother throughout the meeting but hadn’t gotten
a good read on him. All she could surmise was that he and Michael must have inherited
their temperaments from Abraham, since both of them had been tussling on the floor.

“Now for our final order of business,” Alan said. “I’ve shared Abraham’s wishes with
all of you. The board needs to approve Isaac’s installment as temporary president
and CEO. We can do this by a voice vote.”

“Hold on a minute,” Michael said. “If the board has to vote, does the board also have
the right to submit additional nominees?”

“Legally, yes,” Alan said, “but practically no. There are six votes on the board.
I hold Abraham’s proxy, and I also have my own vote. Saralyn has a vote, Isaac has
a vote, and your mother and sister have a vote. Thus, it’ll only take three votes
to gain the approval. I’m casting my vote and Abraham’s proxy in accordance
with his wishes, and I’m certain that Saralyn and Isaac will, too.” He looked at them.
“Am I right?”

Saralyn stood. “Let’s stop playing games, Alan. There’s no need for a vote. There
are four of us and two of them. We don’t need their approval. They should be happy
to be in the room.” She shot a hot glance at Michael. “And Mr. Big Mouth over there
doesn’t even have a vote, so I don’t want to see him at another meeting.”

“Who are you calling Big Mouth?” Michael shouted, nostrils flaring.

His mother stopped further input from him with a stern, “Michael!”

“You can’t do that,” Deborah said, jumping in before she could stop herself. Michael
shouldn’t have come, but Saralyn had no right to treat him with such disdain. “If
Isaac’s wife can be here, then I don’t see why my brother can’t. He is, after all,
Abraham’s son.” Deborah took a huge dose of satisfaction when she saw Saralyn blanch.
She opened her mouth to say more, but her mother shook her head and mouthed,
That’s enough.
Her “home training” demanded that she obey.

“In case you weren’t listening,” Saralyn said, “we have four votes, including Abraham’s,
and you have two. I can do whatever I want.”

“Mother,” Isaac said, a warning in his tone.

Saralyn looked at her son. “I’ll see you in your office in ten minutes.” With that,
she picked up her hat, put it on, and strode out of the boardroom.

Alan cleared his throat. “We’re about finished here. I’ll be working closely with
Isaac to make sure the ongoing projects outlined today run smoothly. In addition,
I’ll be assisting Deborah as she gets up to speed with Running Brook.”

“Just keep me updated,” Isaac said, looking at her for the first time.

Deborah wondered if he wanted updates because it was her project, but it didn’t matter.
“Of course,” she said, deciding not to give in to her insecurities.

He nodded. “I’ll have my secretary set something up over the next week or so.”

Deborah nodded. What he proposed seemed fair to her. He was the boss, after all.

“You don’t have to look over my sister’s shoulder, Isaac,” Michael said. “She’s more
than competent at what she does. She’s had to work for everything she’s ever gotten.”
His unspoken
unlike you
was heard loud and clear.

Her brother was anything but subtle, Deborah thought. “It’s all right, Michael. I
can defend myself.” She turned to Isaac. “You’re well within your rights to ask for
updates. I think they’ll be good for both of us. We haven’t worked together before
so the updates will be a chance for us to get a feel for each other’s work styles.
I don’t have a problem with it at all. I think it’s a great idea.”

“Good,” Isaac said.

Alan gave her a smile that told her he was proud of the way she’d handled the brewing
controversy. “Well, that’s it for today’s meeting,” he said.

Isaac and Rebecca hustled out of the room. Deborah guessed they were going to meet
Saralyn in Isaac’s office.

“Good riddance,” Michael said when the door closed behind them.

“Michael Thomas,” his mother said. “What did you think you were doing? I know you
have better manners than you showed today.”

Michael pressed a kiss on her cheek. “It was business, Mama. Sometimes it gets dirty.
It can’t be helped.”

Leah didn’t look as though she agreed.

“Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Thomas,” Alan said. “This was a
tame board meeting compared to some others we’ve had. Abraham likes—how can I put
this—engagement.”

Deborah laughed. “Always the diplomat, huh, Alan?”

“Somebody has to be the voice of reason. Hot blood runs through those Martin veins.”
He turned to Michael. “Abraham would have enjoyed sparring with you today.”

“The old man wouldn’t be a match for me,” Michael said. “Besides, if he’d wanted an
equal sparring partner, I’d be on the board.”

“He has a point, Alan,” Deborah said. “Let’s hear the diplomat’s response.”

Alan smiled at her again and she smiled back. “I’d rather have that discussion with
Michael man-to-man, over lunch.” He turned to Michael. “I’m free today. How’s your
schedule?”

“I always have time to gain insight into how the old man thinks, if he thinks.”

“Michael!”

“Sorry, Mama,” Michael said. “I seem to be on a roll.”

“Well, you need to get off, and quickly.”

Deborah stood staring at Alan. “What?” he asked.

“I can’t believe you’re such a sexist—a man-to-man meeting? This is not the fifties.
Women
do
think.”

Michael chuckled. “Down, girl,” he said. “Alan probably knows our conversation might
get heated. Isn’t that right, Alan?”

“It is,” he answered, keeping his eyes on Deborah. “Otherwise, there’d be no contest.
I’d choose you for a lunch date over your brother any day.”

Deborah couldn’t believe Alan was flirting with her with her mother and brother present.
She brushed off his words. “Always the diplomat.” She turned to her mother. “Why don’t
we do a girls’ lunch?” she offered. “We don’t need men, do we?”

“Speak for yourself, darling,” Leah said. Both men laughed.

Alan checked his watch. “It’s about noon,” he said to Michael. “Are you ready to eat?”

Michael nodded. “I’m ready to have this conversation. I don’t need food.”

“Well, I do,” Alan said. He turned to Leah. “It was good seeing you again,” he said.
“I hope you weren’t too overwhelmed.”

“It was fine,” she said. “I’m used to unruly children.”

Alan smiled. “Deborah, I’ll see you at the three o’clock production meeting.”

“I’ll be there,” she said.

After the men left the room, Leah turned to her daughter. “What’s going on with you
and Alan?”